Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The problem with Islam

On April 15 during the annual marathon in
Boston, two bombs
exploded, killing 3 people. More than 280 were injured, some of them
severely. The alleged perpetrators turned out to be two brothers - Tamerlan and Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, US residents of Chechen origin. Tamerlan was killed and
Dzhokhar was injured and captured. News agencies report that the two brothers,
who practised Islam, were motivated
by their religious views. The elder brother, Tamerlan (26), who was
blindly followed by Dzhokhar in everything, allegedly expressed"increasing disaffection and disgust with
things Christian and American" and "anger about America and Christianity". (The
usual story about an anti-Western immigrant spitting hatred against his host
country where nobody is keeping him by force.)

I am a Muslim woman living
in the USA I read some of your articles and totally agree with you on many
points.

I am still a Muslim but at
the same time I hold rather peculiar positions on many points.

There are five pillars of
Islam and six pillars of faith that cannot be modified. That's all. The rest can
be negotiated and must be modernized... Let me comment on some points.

1. Polygamy is indeed
permitted in Islam. But I have got a great example. Tunisia has a constitution
based on Shari’a law but polygamy is prohibited. I object to implementing
Shari’a in any countries. Shari’a is outdated and as a matter of fact I am sure
Allah understands it. Nobody is now burning witches in Great Britain but nobody
said Jesus Christ doesn’t exist or anything. Islam has to be on the background
and the secular laws have to be on the foreground.

2. Hijab is not a must for
Muslim women. I don’t wear hijab and have never worn it. My daughter is not
wearing hijab either... If you feel comfortable wearing
hijab, it’s OK, wear it. I have an opinion that hijab is outdated... That is my
opinion.

3. Disbelievers will not go
to Heaven. Virgins in Heaven? I have nothing to say about it. Who knows? As a
modern person, I don’t believe Mohammed (pbuh) knew any of these things. Human
beings cannot comprehend such things and we have to just leave it alone and move
on with our life on Earth.

4. Killing of disbelievers
if they don’t embrace Islam. It is outdated. In the modern world such things
should not be tolerated. It was the case in the 7th century but thanks to Allah
we are living in the 21st century!

5. What is the problem with
Islam? The problem is that people perceive religion as divine; therefore it must
not be criticized. But we have to adopt the way westerners treated their
religions. The example of the Church of England is a good one.

6. Killing of apostates.
Again it is outdated. It should not be practiced in the 21st century.

7. Men are breadwinners,
women are housewives. Men are heads of the family. I earn more than my husband.
My Arab husband is a stay‑at‑home dad. Women should be able to choose... I don’t want to repeat myself but Islam
has to be modernized.

Dear Ali, I appreciate your
work. But I think we have to modernize Islam because I have serious doubts that
you and other wonderful people can eradicate Islam completely. Modernization is
something that is more likely to happen. What is going on in the Middle Eastern
countries is awful. The West has to help with stopping this insanity and
modernizing these countries. I am fully aware of the fact that my beliefs would
be “attacked” in the Middle East and I would be stoned to death. That is why we
in the West have something to do with that. We ought to do it for our sake. And
I thank America for the opportunity to air my opinions freely. God bless
America. I believe in Allah and hope for the afterlife. But I reject any
authorities and communicate with God without imams or mullahs, whom I consider
to be a threat to humanity...

Finally, at the time of the
prophet, the principles perhaps were suitable, but is it really so now?
Therefore, let's evaluate, reread. Let's pick the suitable ones. Religion is
made for the benefit of humans.

Best regards,

Haifa

A Modernized
Muslim

______________

This is the position of many modern Muslims,
including Irshad Manji the author of “What Is Wrong with Islam, Today”. A great
number of Muslims realize there is something wrong with Islam, but they
erroneously believe the problem can be solved through the miracle of
reinterpretation; and that they can keep the Quran and believe in Muhammad but
somehow do the opposite of what he did and said and still call themselves
Muslims. The following was my response to Haifa.

Dear Haifa,

Thank you for your poignant comments. I am
happy to say it is YOU who are not Muslim. You sound very much like me, years
ago. As a matter of fact most of the Iranians prior to the revolution of 1979
were like you. My mother never wore chador unless she wanted to go to the
grocery store around the corner and did not want to dress for the occasion. This
was, of course, before the Revolution. But things changed overnight. The
moderate Muslims became hardcore Islamists, rallied around Khomeini and foaming
at the mouth poured into the streets shouting “death to America, death to
Israel.”

You say Christians modernized; why can’t
Muslims? There is a simple answer to that. The New Testament does not contain so
much violence and terror as does the Quran. I don’t say the Bible is factual. It
sounds more like myths and legends. Nonetheless, the Jesus of the Bible is a
saintly figure. He is the embodiment of goodness. So if you don’t mind believing
in fairytales, Christianity can make you a good person. Of course, fanatics are
everywhere but the message of Christ is not fanatical. Recall when the Pharisees
brought a prostitute to him, asking him what to do with her? His response was
“Let the one who has not sinned throw the first stone.” If you really practice
just this teaching alone, you will become a good human being. Isn't this the
purported goal of religions to make us good people, forgiving and mindful of our
own sins?

Islam is different. The author of Islam was a
vile man. He is not a mythological figure. He really existed, and his acts are
recorded. Many ludicrous miracles are attributed to him, but once you put aside
all those as nonsense and study his life, the portrait of a psychopath emerges.
Muhammad was anything but saintly. There is not an act of goodness in his life.
Even his kindness and generosity were manipulative and politically motivated.
Take the example of his largesse to the Meccans. He raided the big tribe of
Hawazin, killed many of them, took away all their belongings and captured their
wives and children. Their elders came to him supplicating for mercy. They
brought along Shima, his milk‑sister, the daughter of Halima, who had nursed him
for five years when he was a child to tell him about his childhood among them
and to soften his heart. She reminded him how she used to carry him on her back,
and how tenderly her people took care of him. He told them if they convert to
Islam they could choose between their loved ones and their property. Is that a
choice? They chose their loved ones. Then Muhammad gave all the booty stolen
from these nomads to the potentates of Mecca. Those higher in rank received
more. Other tribes who had taken part in the war, and had helped him win,
protested. They asked for their share, and were about to start a mutiny.He made a “moving” speech saying, "I want to
soften the hearts of the Meccans toward Islam” and told those who had received
nothing “You take the Prophet of God with you instead. Which do you prefer: the
wealth of this world or the messenger of Allah?”

This cunning man was a master of deception and
manipulation. He ruined the lives of thousands of Hawazin, killed them and stole
all their herds, camels, and property and gave them to the wealthy Meccans to
“soften their hearts toward Islam.”There is not a single episode in his life that was done out of the
goodness of his heart. Every act he performed was calculated and manipulative.
He was a psychopathic narcissist worse than Hitler.

The difference between Christianity and Islam
lies in the difference between Jesus and Muhammad...

You ask: “Can Islam be reformed?” No, it can’t!
To reform Islam you have to first get rid of Muhammad and second get rid of the
Quran. You have to take out a great portion of that book which is violent. The
rest is nonsense and absurdity. But this you can’t do, because you have no
authority to do such a thing. Muhammad said that he has perfected his religion
(Q. 5:3). How can you improve something, which is perfect? You can’t change the
Quran. You can’t reform it. All you can do is to reinterpret and, for example
pretend, “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” means something else.

Or you can say these parts of the Quran are no
longer applicable. The problem is: who gets to decide which parts of the Quran
are applicable and which parts are obsolete? Who has such authority to make this
decision? If you rely on your own conscience and say the verses that call for
murder are outdated, someone else, like Khomeini could protest and
say:

Why do you Mullahs only go after the ordinances
of prayer and fasting? Why do you only read the Quranic verses of mercy and do
not read the verses of killing? Quran says; kill, imprison!Why are you only clinging to the parts that
talk about mercy?Mercy is against God.
[Khomeini’s speech 1981 Commemoration of the Birth of
Muhammad]

Who can say you are right and he is not?Finally if it is left to you to winnow the
good teachings from the bad ones, why do you need to follow this or any other
religion at all? If you can discern this much to know the difference between
right and wrong, you don’t need any guidance; you are mature enough to find your
own way using your own inner compass. In that case, can’t you look into other
religions and philosophies and pick the good things from them too? If so, you
are a freethinker. You don’t need a religion. You are a guide and a prophet unto
yourself.

A book of guidance that sometimes guides and
sometimes misleads is not a book of guidance. If you are lost and ask for
directions from a passerby and he points in all directions, can that person be
trusted? Is his guidance of any value? Of course one of those directions he is
pointing at is the right one. But if you have to rely on your own resources to
find that out, what good is it asking such an untrustworthy person for
directions?What about those who did not
have your sagacity and went the wrong way after being misled by this charlatan?
That is exactly what the Quran does. It tells you something good, but it also
teaches you a myriad of bad things. Why do we need these religions at all? They
do not guide anyone. They only give you a vacuous promise of an afterlife, which
is good only for suckers. How can we trust that promise when everything else
they said is proven to be false?

You say that the Christians have managed to
sieve through the Bible and choose only the good teachings. This is true for
most of them but not for all of them. There are also many fanatics among the
Christians and some of them are very hateful people.Fortunately their number is relatively low,
but nonetheless it shows that being a Christian is not a ticket to the Land of
Enlightenment.

However, Islam can’t be reformed. You need to
have an authority with a rank similar or superior to the one claimed by Muhammad
to be able to reform Islam. But that can’t be done, because Muhammad said he was
the last prophet.

Fortuitously, today I received an email from a
reader, (Father Lev) who suggested we should “Support Ahmadiyya Islam to check
the expansion of Islamo‑Fascism!” He argued:

There are two key points in Ahmadiyya that make
it into a practical solution to the problem of Islamism. Moslems claim that
nothing can be added to the Quranwhile
the Ahmadiyya Moslems do not! And the Ahmadiyya Moslems have officially
condemned militant jihad. (Jihad against the kuffar (unbelievers) has been
declared haram (sin) by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed! The FIRST is especially important,
because, since it holds that nothing can be added to the Quran , mainstream
Islam can't be reformed, and is bound to stay forever a barbarous ideology.
Ahmadiyya Islam CAN be reformed. The difference is subtle, but absolutely
crucial. If civilized nations invest in Ahmadiyya Islam, it may save the world!
This is because Moslems will not convert to a religion that is too different
from what they are used to practicing. The most effective way to stop Islamism
in its tracks is to help strengthen the posture of Ahmadiyya Islam in the Moslem
world.

The problem with Ahmadiyya and all other
offshoots of Islam is that they are offshoots of Islam. Although the
followers of these religions have distanced themselves from the violence in the
Quran, they are rooted in Islam, and they acknowledge Muhammad as a prophet of
God.

You can’t build too high without a solid
foundation. The foundation of these religions is Islam, and Islam is a lie.
Muhammad was not a prophet of any god. I don’t know whether these words are from
Christ or they are attributed to him, but whoever said them must have had a good
understanding of the Principle underlying the creation. These words are: “Only
truth will set us free.”I believe this
is the ultimate wisdom. ONLY TRUTH WILL SET US FREE.

Like you, the followers of religions that are
offshoots of Islam say Muhammad belonged to another time. This is moral
relativism. At what time was raiding innocent populations, slaying unarmed
people and raping and enslaving their wives and children okay?...

The atrocities perpetrated by Muhammad exceeded
anything that anyone had experienced before. Amazingly, his followers, taken
aback by his utter lack of conscience and his monstrous inhumanity, thought he
must be supported by some invisible force for they could not understand how a
human being could be so ruthless and kill so many people with such conviction
while praising God at the same time and inviting people to be pious. Criminals
do not talk about God. They often have a trace of conscience left in them and
are often overtaken by remorse. But not the psychopaths! Psychopaths do not have
a conscience. They feel entitled to kill, and they believe they are doing God’s
work. This is what Hitler said:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in
accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against
the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. [Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York : Mariner Books, 1999, p.
65]

Muhammad offset his follower's balance of right
and wrong. He overloaded it with so much evil that it broke.

We humans have an inner balance with which we
weigh good and evil. This balance, in Muslims stopped working. The indicator is
stuck on zero. Muhammad's companions could no longer register right and wrong.
Because it's hard to envision how a human being could be this ruthless, they
persuaded themselves that he must be from God. As for why this god is so
demonic, they fooled themselves with the lies that he told them. He told them
that it is not up to man to question God. This absurd explanation satisfied his
benighted followers. They resorted to fideism and argued that reason is irrelevant to religious belief.
The great Imam Ghazali (1058 – 1111) said: “Where the claims of reason come into
conflict with revelation, reason must yield to revelation.” A similar thesis in
defense of foolishness is presented by Paul in 1 Cor. 1:20-25 where he argues
“the foolishness of God is wiser than (the wisdom of) men”. The statement “Credo quia absurdum” (I believe because
it is absurd), often attributed to Tertullian, is based on this passage of Paul.
In DCC 5 he said: “The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed,
because it is absurd.” Upon this belief in absurdity fideism is founded and it
is the position that has been adopted by Muslims. This fideistic attitude
allowed the early believers to abandon reason and accept whatever Muhammad did,
even his blatant crimes, without questioning him.

However, mostly they WANTED to believe because
they had no other choice. Muhammad had become their only source of sustenance
and survival.

The city of Yathreb (Medina) was devastated by
the Muslims. Its original inhabitants - those who ran the businesses and
provided employment, who were artisans, tradesmen and farmers - the Jews, were
either banished or killed. The Arabs had been working for the Jews. Now, with
the Jews gone or massacred, they were out of work and depended on Muhammad and
his raids for their sustenance. It was not convenient to think critically about
what they were doing. They let themselves go with the flow and kept themselves
fooled. They got their confirmation by watching the zealotry of their
coreligionists. Each follower encouraged others, and among them they created a
mass hysteria that has lasted up to this day. “How can all these people be
wrong?” was their rationale. This is the same rationale Muslims use today to
keep their faith alive. This is what happens in cult compounds. The members lose
their identity and surrender their rational faculty to the guru. They become an
extension of the group and a reflection of the cult leader. The cultish nature
of Islam has not changed a bit. Fourteen hundred years later, if you join Islam,
you are received with cheers and hugs, but if you decide to leave, you’ll be
chased down and killed.

You say that violence was the norm in those
days. Even if this were true, which it is not, did Muhammad come to follow the
bad practices of his people or set new standards?

Now, the most important question is WHY: Why
keep Islam and honor Muhammad? Can we do the same thing with Nazism? Can we
reform Nazism - pretend that Hitler was an innocent product of his time, and
pick and choose, only the good parts of his Mein Kampf? How much must we fool
ourselves, and WHY?

What we have to understand is that Muhammad,
like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot,
Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson, and millions of other less known
monsters, was a pathological narcissist. These celebrated men were not normal.
They were sick in the mind.

Dr. Sam Vaknin wrote:

Narcissism is contagious. The narcissist
creates a "bubble universe,” similar to a cult. In this bubble, special rules
apply.These rules do not always
correspond to outer reality. Using complex defence mechanisms, such as
projective identification, the narcissist forces his victims ‑ spouse, mate,
friend, colleague ‑ to “play a role” assigned to him by “God” ‑ the narcissist.

The narcissist rewards compliance with his
script and punishes any deviation from it with severe abuse. In other words, the
narcissist CONDITIONS people around him, using intimidation, positive and
negative reinforcements and feedback, ambient abuse (“gaslighting”), covert, or
controlling abuse, and overt, classical abuse. Thus conditioned, the
narcissist's victims gradually come to assimilate the narcissist's way of
thinking (follies a‑deux) and his modus operandi ‑ his methods. You can abandon
the narcissist ‑ but the narcissist never abandons you. He is there, deep inside
your traumatic memories, lurking, waiting to act out. You have been modified,
very much like an alien snatching bodies.

Dear Haifa, the Umma is not only misguided, but
it is also sick. The pathology of Muhammad is reflected in every one of his
followers. We are dealing with a community of psychopaths. A billion
narcissists! A billion insane people!All the Muslims are hiding in this psychotic “bubble universe” created by
Muhammad. We are all playing the role that this mentally sick man has assigned
to us. We all follow his script. These rituals of prayers and the pillars of
faith that you mentioned are only scripts of a psychotic man to keep us hooked.
We are conditioned by the fear of a boogie-man deity, the punishment of an
insane hellfire and the greed of a sensual and even orgiastic paradise that this
madman has instilled in us.

Fear and greed are the tools of the narcissist
through which he manipulates his victims. We have all come to assimilate
Muhammad’s narcissistic way of thinking and his modus operandi. I have received
thousands of emails from Muslims, and the common theme in all of them is fear.
FEAR is the only motivator of these poor souls. They can’t think, they can’t
reason, they have lost their rational faculty. Their brain is paralyzed by this
fear that Muhammad so masterfully implanted in them.When they fail to refute any of my arguments
with reason, they resort to fear and remind me of hellfire. This is their
ultimate weapon. This fear has shackled their brains and they cannot think
anymore. They dismiss all doubts because of this paralyzing fear.

So there are two answers to your question. The
first is that Islam can’t be reformed, and the second is why: Why bother
reforming a cult created by a psychopath and keep his memory alive?

Now to answer Father Lev who suggested we
should “Support Ahmadiyya Islam to check the expansion of Islamofascism.” I
would like to say this is far more difficult than weaning Muslims from Islam
altogether. What Father Lev is suggesting is fighting one lie with another lie.
But I give my word to you that truth is more powerful than all lies combined.
The Ahmadiyya sect has been around for over a century and half. Its teachings
are far better than Muhammad’s Islam. But it has not garnered more than a few
million followers. On the other hand, the “movement” of ex‑Muslims is growing by
leaps and bounds. We are millions already. We are spreading all across the
world. We have no leaders and no organization. You don’t have to believe in
anything. All you need to do is to see that Islam is false. This is really a
grassroots movement. In the span of few short years, we have grown much bigger
than Ahmadiyyah or any offshoot of Islam. If you want to know which is the
fastest growing “religion” it’s apostasy! (Assuming you can call apostasy a
religion). Why are we so successful? It is because we stick to the
truth.

Islam cannot be reformed. But it can be
eradicated. Reforming Islam means adding more lies to lies. For how long this
huge edifice of lies can support itself?... The
only thing that keeps Islam alive is the emotional attachment of Muslims to
it.They are addicted. This is Stockholm
syndrome. Muslims must be weaned from Islam, and Islam must be razed to the
ground... Some religions can
be reformed. There might be something of value in them for those who “inhabit”
them, and with a little bit of reinforcement and remodelling they can become
good religions. I believe Christianity is one such religion, which along with
Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism can be reformed, updated and
modernized... This
is not the case with Islam. Islam is falling apart and it is not only
endangering its inhabitants, it is a peril to everyone else. You can’t reform
Islam and you can’t build another structure on top of it. Islam must be
bulldozed. It must be eradicated. We have to alert its inhabitants and get them
out as soon as possible. Get them out as many as we can - and demolish it before
it takes more lives.

At no time in history has Mankind faced such
horrendous prospects of doom and gloom. We are at the most crucial juncture in
the existance of our species. Why? Because over a billion people are possessed
by the ghost of a psychopath! They are reduced to zombies! Their souls are
snatched away from them. They have lost their thinking power. They follow this
dead man’s scripts, and they will not relent until they destroy the world.

Don’t let that happen Haifa! Leave this
psychopath and help others too.

_______________

In a follow-up letter Haifa wrote:

Maybe I am already an apostate but I am not
courageous enough to admit it. Probably I am just trying to blindly stick to my
religion. Can we resuscitate Islam? That's the question for me today.

I responded:

Dear Haifa,

Why do you want to resuscitate this monster?
Our problem today is that there are some Muslims who try to resuscitate Islam.
That is why we are experiencing so much terror and murder. You and I must not
attempt resuscitating Islam. On the contrary, we must hammer a stake into its
heart and make sure it never raises its head again. This beast was a
bloodsucking monster from the start. What is there to resuscitate? What you
probably meant is reform, but we already talked about that too.

Finally good news from Haifa:

Dear Ali.

After fierce discussions my husband and I
decided to leave Islam and stop helping this monster. It's useless and a total
waste of time. My daughter said she already left Islam and just waited for her
parents to do the same.

Thanks a lot for your time and attention.

Keep up your work

Best regards,

Haifa.

There are millions of Haifas among Muslims.
Islam can’t be reformed. But it can be eradicated. Once the truth is said, this
massive edifice of lies called Islam will crumble like a house of cards. Islam
is based on lies. The best way to demolish lies is to tell the truth."

About Me

My name is Maya Markova. This blog is my little corner where I write about things that interest me, in as politically incorrect style as I like. I do not claim to be clever, good, free of prejudice and bigotry, broad-minded, enlightened, polite, attractive or superior in any other way. This is not a science blog and I write here what I like, not what people think a "scientist" should write. I try not to bore my readers but of course I cannot guarantee that what I am writing will be interesting for you.